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PSYCHIATRY RUINS CREATIVITY

A Public Service Report from Citizens Commission on Human Rights

HARMING ARTISTS

CCIITTIIZZEENNSS CCOOMMMMIISSSSIIOONN OONN HHUUMMAANN RRIIGGHHTTSS

The Citizens Commission on HumanRights (CCHR) was established in 1969 bythe Church of Scientology to investigateand expose psychiatric violations of humanrights, and to clean up the field of mentalhealing. Its co-founder is Dr. ThomasSzasz, professor of psychiatry emeritus andan internationally renowned author. Today,CCHR has more than 130 chapters in over30 countries. Its board of advisors, calledCommissioners, includes doctors, lawyers,educators, artists, business professionals,and civil and human rights representatives.

CCHR has inspired and caused manyhundreds of reforms by testifying beforelegislative hearings and conducting publichearings into psychiatric abuse, as well asworking with media, law enforcement andpublic officials the world over.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION:CCHR International

6616 Sunset Blvd.Los Angeles, CA, USA 90028

Telephone: (323) 467-4242(800) 869-2247 • Fax: (323) 467-3720

www.cchr.orge-mail: [email protected]

®

19137 CCHR Pamphlet - Artists 10/28/04 4:51 PM Page 2

RECOMMENDATIONS

1 If you or a family member or friend has been coer-cively treated or abused by a psychiatrist, consult alawyer to determine your right to prosecute crimi-nally and civilly the responsible psychologists orpsychiatrists, their colleges and associations.

2 If you are ever taken to a psychiatric facility,including a psychiatric drug detox/rehab centeragainst your will, immediately call an attorney. DoNOT consent to treatment. Do not sign anythingwithout an attorney present.

3 If psychiatrists are portrayed in film, television andother art mediums, their image should sharplyreflect the complete lack of science underlyingtheir theories and “diagnoses” and the harm inher-ent in their treatments and practices.

will do far more for a troubled person thanrepeated drugging, shocks and other psychi-atric abuses.

Researchers report: “The most commonmedically induced psychiatric symptoms areapathy, anxiety, visual hallucinations, mood andpersonality changes, dementia, depression,delusional thinking, sleep disorders, poor con-centration, changed speech patterns, rapid heartbeat, tremulousness and confusion.

Further, “No single psychiatric symptomexists that cannot at times be caused or aggra-vated by various physical illnesses.”

Noninvasive means provide the mentallydistressed person with a truly humane chanceto make it through their difficulties.

The artist can be a powerful and greatlybeneficial influence on society. Society in turnneeds to take care of its artists. And artists needto take better care of themselves.

Caution: No one should stop taking any psychiatric drug without the adviceand assistance of a competent non-psychiatric medical doctor.

15© 2004 CCHR. All Rights Reserved. CITIZENS COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS, CCHR and theCCHR logo are trademarks and service marks owned by Citizens Commission on Human Rights. Printedin the U.S.A. Item #FLO 19137

PHOTO CREDITS: Cover: Bettmann/Corbis; 2: Bettmann/Corbis; 4: Bettmann/Corbis;Underwood & Underwood/Corbis; Joe Giron/Corbis; p. 7: Bettmann/Corbis; 8:Bettmann/Corbis; 10: John Springer Collection/Corbis; 13: Bettmann/Corbis.

This publication was made possible by a grant from the United StatesInternational Association of Scientologists Members’ Trust.

IINNTTRROODDUUCCTTIIOONNA MESSAGE TO ARTISTS

E very great society has its creative minds—its trueartists. From Ancient Greece

and Rome, through the Renaissanceto the world today, mankind haswitnessed and revered men and women of exceptionalartistic ability.

The renowned American writer Henry Jamessaid, “It is art that makes life.” His words are no lesstrue today, for indeed, artists are the very individualswho dream our future and create the realities oftomorrow. True, so do engineers and business pro-fessionals and visionaries in other fields, but by andlarge the futures they create revolve around ourmaterial well-being. It is the artist who lifts the spirit,makes us laugh and cry and can even shape the spir-

Arts andentertainment areamong the fields thatwere greatly andadversely affected bythe Freudian theoriesabout man.

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T he world needs itsartists. And whilepsychiatry pretends

to help them, in reality itonly harms.

To those who ask,“What is the alternative?”,there is an answer: Peoplein desperate circum-stances must be providedproper non-psychiatric care. Sound medicalattention, good nutrition, a healthy, safe envi-ronment and activity that promotes confidence,

CCHHAAPPTTEERR TTHHRREEEETHE WORLD

NEEDS ARTISTS

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The entire activity ofpsychiatry with its drugsand shocks invalidatesindividuals. The trueartist, like theincomparable JudyGarland, inspires thebeauty in all of us.Psychiatry andpsychology deny it.

itual future of our culture. It is artists who make life.This explains, then, why artists are cherished the

world over.Unfortunately, in many cases, they are assets we

have lost too soon—losses that have left us poorer. Inrecent decades we have all mourned the untimelydeaths of great artists who had enriched our lives, yetleft before their work was done. Luminaries of litera-ture, the screen, the theater and the concert stage suchas Ernest Hemingway, France’s great writer AntoninArtaud, jazz singer Billie Holiday, Judy Garland,Marilyn Monroe, Vivien Leigh, Kurt Cobain, MichaelHutchence, Phil Hartman and many, many more.

Faced with even this partial list, it would be easyto form the impression that the lives of artists areunavoidably tumultuous, that the pressures of success bring demands tooheavy to be borne. It wouldalso be easy to believe that tobe a successful artist you mustbe neurotic or worse.

None of this is true.In each of the cases above,

hidden influences worked toensure the tragic outcome. Thetruth is, each of these great artistsand many of the others who haveleft us were offered “help.” Instead they were betrayedand placed on a path which assured their destruction.

This betrayal came through the direct or indirectinfluence of psychiatrists or psychologists, whoclaimed they would help but were, in effect, adestructive influence that left these artists dreadfullydamaged—their foundations of strength and certaintytorn away—or killed them.

We have mourned the great artists we have losttoo soon. Let us not grieve for more. CCHR providesthis information so that you can see for yourself howartists have been lied to and betrayed. We urge you toact upon this knowledge to protect those who needhelp and ensure that our future is not betrayed as well.

Jan Eastgate, President, Citizens Commissionon Human Rights International

“Many great artists who have left us wereoffered ‘help’ but were,instead, betrayed andplaced on a path which assured their destruction.”— Jan Eastgate

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abnormal behavior. It can also predispose a child tolater cocaine use. The drug kept Cobain awake sosedatives were also prescribed. After years of pre-scription psychiatric drugs, his progression to heroinwas almost a given. Compounding the Ritalin sideeffects were untreated chronic medical conditionsthat affected him his entire life, including a curvatureof his spine and a “burning, nauseous” stomach. Infact, Cobain spoke of heroin as the only drug that“quenched the fire in his gut.” He took himself to aLos Angeles psychiatric drug recovery center. Thirty-six hours after admission, he bolted from the programand in a small room above his garage, ended his lifewith a single shotgun blast to his head. Heroin andthe psychiatric drug, Valium, were found in his blood stream.

❚ PHIL HARTMAN: 1948–1999On May 28, 1998, Brynn Hartman murdered her

husband, comic Phil Hartman—known for his workon such popular TV shows as “Saturday Night Live”and “The Simpsons”—and then killed herself. Shehad been taking an antidepressant, which the coro-ner found in her system alongwith alcohol and cocaine. Inthe weeks before the shoot-ings she told friends of sideeffects that made her feel“…like she was going to jumpout of her skin.” She had con-tacted the psychiatrist for helpfour days before the inci-dent—he merely suggestedshe cut the dosage in half. Dr.Joseph Glenmullen, author ofProzac Backlash says that peo-ple who take such antidepres-sants can “become very distraught. … They feel likejumping out of their skin. The irritability and impul-sivity can make people suicidal or homicidal.”

Psychiatrists do know the connectionbetween psychiatric drugs, violence and suicide.But the business of prescribing these drugs is toogood and much too lucrative to stop, merely toprotect or save lives.

People who take antidepressants can “become very distraught. ... They feel like jumping out of their skin. The irritability and impulsivity can make people suicidal or homicidal.”

— Dr. Joseph Glenmullen, author of Prozac Backlash

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CCHHAAPPTTEERR OONNEEPSYCHIATRY AND FILM:

FATAL ATTRACTION

A t the end of the 19thcentury, two developments took place inEurope which would greatly influence the

way many would view themselves and society. In1879, in Leipzig, German professor of psychologyWilhelm Wundt announced with great authority, yetno scientific foundation, that man was no more thana soulless animal, a mere product of his environ-ment.

In the late 1890s in Vienna, Austria, SigmundFreud declared man to be a product of his childhoodmisfortunes and sexual hang-ups. Along with thisequally unproven theory, came a new subject: psychoanalysis.

Wherever people have applied the fundamentalconcepts of these practices, those parts of society haveexperienced radical changes, the fields of arts andentertainment among them.

Helped in many ways by Hollywood, Freudianthought quickly entered the mainstream culture. Thefact that many of Freud’s now dismissed theories weredeveloped while he was an avid cocaine user was notknown at the time.

In 1916, flanking Freud’s Hollywood invasion,psychologist Hugo Münsterberg wrote The Photoplay: A

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Charlie Parker, Kurt Cobainand Judy Garland — allvictims of psychiatry.


“Pianist and composer of over 1,000 songs.” The psy-chiatrist diagnosed this as “delusions of grandeur”and put him in a straitjacket. Subsequently, he spentyears going in and out of psychiatric institutionswhere he was electroshocked. Friend Jackie Macleansaid, “Bud didn’t remember too much, actually, abouthis life prior to going to the hospital because of the[ECT] treatment they had given him.” In 1959, hemoved to France where he continued being givenThorazine, a powerful tranquilizer known as the“chemical lobotomy.” By 1964 Powell was bloated, hiseyes vacant and he walked with a shuffle thatbetrayed his drugged condition. He died from a com-bination of liver failure, TB and malnutrition.

PSYCHIATRIC DRUGS CREATE HARMPsychiatric drugs do not help a person achieve

more creative abilities or more knowledge about lifeor the mind; they do not enable a person to solve hisor her problems. They may cause a person tobelieve that his problems have been fixed, that he isbetter off, but all that has happened is that he hasbeen made less aware, less in control. The originalproblem or distress is still there, unresolved.

These drugs have now been accepted so exten-sively, and psychiatry has so aggressively marketeditself as a branch of medicine, that the drugs arenow seen as prescription medicines, not the life-threatening agents they really are.

Psychiatric drugs are highly addictive, andPsychiatrists know that, which compounds the crime.

❚ KURT COBAIN: 1967–1994An energetic, talented and creative

child, from his pre-school years KurtCobain had been subjected to a chemi-cal straitjacket after being diagnosed as“hyperactive.” He was prescribed thecocaine-like stimulant, Ritalin. Ritalin isa Schedule II drug in the same abusecategory as opium, cocaine and mor-phine and is highly addictive. Side

effects can include: loss of appetite, weight loss,insomnia, heart palpitations, nausea, chest pain andabdominal pain, hallucinations and bizarre and

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Psychological Study, officially setting intomotion psychology and psychiatry’sinfluence over cinema. Münsterberg hadstudied under Wundt before headingHarvard University’s psychological labo-ratory in the late 1800s. “The [movie]screen,” he wrote, “ought to offer a uniqueopportunity to interest wide circles in psychologicalexperiments and mental tests.”

Münsterberg was one of the first to suggest thatpsychologists, as self-appointed experts on the mind,should be hired to advise the film industry.Provocatively, he claimed that films could be “fraughtwith dangers” and that “the possibilities of psychicinfection and destruction cannot be overlooked.”

After 70 years, his advice still echoes in the voicesof his modern-day cohorts: “Psychoanalyticallyinformed criticism can be an extremely important aid tounderstanding the special hold that the movies have onaudiences,” a 1987 book on psychiatry in the cinemaasserted.

A PROFIT-MAKING AGENDAPsychiatrists used the Hollywood set as a means of

financing their own movement and agenda.Psychiatrist Karl Menninger enjoyed mixing with pro-ducers and studio heads: they generated business forhis clinic. Those who had met the psychiatrist “weresoon shipping their [so-called] mentally unbalancedperformers off to Topeka [Kansas] for treatment.”

One of these was Robert Walker, who co-starredwith Judy Garland in the 1944 film, “The Clock.” Afterhis separation from actress Jennifer Jones, Walkerbegan drinking heavily. In 1948, Dore Schary, head ofproduction at MGM, gave him an ultimatum: submitto treatment at the Menninger Clinic or be fired.

Walker went to the mid-Western psychiatric facili-ty and was also made to continue regular therapy withLos Angeles psychiatrist Frederick Hacker, who hadtrained at the Menninger clinic. Not only was the psy-chiatric “therapy” ineffective, it killed Walker. OnAugust 28, 1951, Walker died after being given a pow-erful barbiturate. Four decades later, Los Angeles ther-apist Alex Rogawski was the first to be candid aboutthis: “Hacker killed Robert Walker.”

Hugo Münsterberg

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❚ FRANCES FARMER: 1914–1970Frances Farmer was a beautiful screen and stage

actress whose career lit up Hollywood andBroadway in the ‘30s and ‘40s. Upset over a string offailed relationships, Miss Farmer had been commit-ted to an institution in 1943. For seven years, shewas subjected to 90 insulin shocks and electroshock,and sold by psychiatric workers to drunken soldierswho repeatedly raped her. She told of also being“raped by orderlies, gnawed on by rats, poisoned bytainted food, chained inpadded cells, strapped instrait jackets and halfdrowned in ice baths.” Herlast “treatment” was a lobot-omy. Farmer never regainedher abilities and died at theage of 57, destitute.

❚ CHARLIE “BIRD”PARKER: 1920–1955

By the age of 15, Charlie“Bird” Parker was a workingmusician, bringing innovative ideas to jazz and later,with others, creating bebop, which was consideredto reflect the pain and despair of ghetto Blacks. In1946, “Bird” was arrested in Los Angeles for drugpossession and incarcerated in Camarillo state psy-chiatric institution. He narrowly escaped beinggiven electroshock after a medical doctor, RichardFreeman, intervened, saying, “It could permanentlyimpair Parker’s reflexes, reduce him to a manage-able personality [and] a very average musician.”However, he was still prescribed powerful psy-chotropic drugs. On March 12, 1955, “Bird” died ofa heart attack caused by a drug and alcohol relatedcondition. He was 34 years old.

❚ BUD POWELL: 1924–1966Bud Powell did for the piano what Charlie

“Bird” Parker did for the saxophone. He also helpedcreate bebop. In 1945, suffering the effects of a severepolice beating, Powell was admitted to Belleviewpsychiatric facility in New York for evaluation. Onthe admission form he wrote under occupation:

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Authors of Psychiatry and the Cinema, professorsKrin and Glen Gabbard refer to the years 1957-63 asthe Golden Age of psychiatry in cinema. During thisperiod, psychiatrists were portrayed as the “author-itative voices of reason, adjustment and well-being”despite no evidence to substantiate this reputation.

By legitimizing themselves on the silver screen,psychiatrists popularized the fraudulent notion thatdrugs, shock treatment and psychosurgery held thesecrets to happier living. A drug era was usheredin, spurred on unwittingly by Hollywood. Societyhas yet to recover from it.

NAZI PSYCHIATRY’S ‘KILLING FILMS’In the 1930s, Nazi psychiatrists exploited

Germany’s film industry to further their eugenics andracial hygiene agenda by scripting propagandamovies. One film, “Dasein ohne Leben” (ExistenceWithout Life) was aimed at convincing the populationthat care for the sick was too expensive and that thera-py for the “genetically diseased” was useless. Anotherfilm, “Geisteskrank” (Mentally Ill), was filmedthrough a gas-chamber peephole, with the scriptblandly reading: “The gas that streams in is complete-ly odorless, and initially robs the patients of their pow-ers of judgment and subsequently of their conscious-ness.” As the patient draws his last breath, a commen-tator says, “Without pain or struggle, and completelyunaware, the patient is liberated by death.” Supportedby such propaganda, psychiatrists murdered 300,000“mental patients” before exporting their killing pro-gram into the concentration camps.

“Demonic” lighting of patients

Nazi “Instructional Film”

Translation: “Mental Hospital”

German psychiatry’spropaganda films justified

the killing of mental patients,a precursor to the Holocaust.


brain in the false belief that this will changebehavior for the “better.” It is still performed inmany countries. Psychiatrists and psychologistsshould no more be let loose to diagnose and treatthe problems faced by those working in the arts,than a butcher should be allowed to operate onpeople. The consequences are staggering anddangerous as the following tragic stories show.

❚ ERNEST HEMINGWAY: 1899–1961 Nobel Prize-winning author Ernest

Hemingway was tricked into admitting himself to apsychiatric institution; he was stripped of hisclothes and dignity and given more than 20 elec-troshock treatments. Shortly afterwards, he told afriend, “Well, what is the sense of ruining my headand erasing my memory, which is my capital, andputting me out of business? It was a brilliant curebut we lost the patient.” In July 1961, days afterbeing released from the Mayo psychiatric clinic,Hemingway committed suicide.

❚ VIVIEN LEIGH: 1913–1967Vivien Leigh, the star of

classic movies such as “Gonewith the Wind” or “A StreetCar Named Desire,” was sub-jected to repeated ECT in psy-chiatric facilities in England;one treatment leaving burnson her temple. Husband SirLawrence Olivier was devas-tated by the changes inLeigh’s personality: “I canonly describe them by sayingthat she was not, now thatshe had been given the treat-

ment, the same girl that I had fallen in love with. …She was now more of a stranger to me than I couldever have imagined possible.”

In actuality Leigh suffered from tuberculosis(TB) and had been prescribed a medication that wasknown to cause insomnia, headaches, restlessness,mental confusion and toxic psychosis. In 1967, thetuberculosis killed her.

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PSYCHIATRY’S VICTIMS

❚ MARILYN MONROE: 1926–1962On August 4, 1962, Marilyn

Monroe ended her life with an over-dose of prescribed psychiatric drugs—after spending six hours with her psy-chiatrist, Ralph Greenson. As Marilynhad neared the height of her success, anacting coach had suggested she under-go psychoanalysis to help tap into her“explosive energy.” In 1955, Monroefirst attended analytic sessions with Dr.Margaret Hohenberg, then with New York psychiatrist,Marianne Kris, who also prescribed powerful barbituratesthat the actress abused until her death. Of the psycho-analysis, the actress said she felt “as if I were going aroundin circles. It was always, how did I feel about this, and whydid I think my mother did that—not where I was going butwhere had I been?” Monroe had made 23 movies in the 7years prior to psychiatry’s influence. She made only 6 filmsduring the 7 years of her psychiatric “care.”

❚ JUDY GARLAND: 1922–1969At age 17, Judy

Garland starred in “TheWizard of Oz” and record-ed what would becomeher signature song, “Overthe Rainbow.” Her studiocontract stipulated thather physical appearancecould not change soGarland began taking pre-scribed psychiatric drugsto “control” weight gain

and powerful barbiturates to sleep. As Garland becameaddicted to the drugs, her behavior became erratic anddisruptive. In 1949, she was subjected to electroshock.Throughout the ensuing years her drug-induced healthproblems became critical, her liver and spleen massivelyswollen and her whole body poisoned. Never escapingpsychiatry’s influence, Garland died of a psychiatricdrug overdose in a London hotel, in July 1969 .

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F or years, psychia-trists and psychol-ogists have labeled

the creative mind as a mental “disorder,” mischar-acterizing an artist’s “feverish brilliance” as a manicphase of craziness, or melancholic performances asdepression. Vision was redefined as hallucination.

Regardless of psychiatry’s total lack of scientificauthenticity, the more entrepreneurial and ambi-tious psychiatrists have discovered a captive market in the entertainment industry. They havecourted and seduced creative individuals—andmade billions in the process.

Their blunt statements of fact are really nevermore than opinion. Margaret Hagen, a lecturer inpsychology and law at Boston University, pulls no

punches: “Clinical psychology is classic junk sci-ence.” Dr. Thomas Szasz, professor of psychiatryemeritus, says the “treatment” of mental “illnesses”is an “unscientific enterprise.”

The lack of science in the American PsychiatricAssociation’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual forMental Disorders (DSM) was described by a psy-chologist attending a DSM hearing: “The low levelof intellectual effort was shocking. Diagnoses weredeveloped by majority vote on the level we woulduse to choose a restaurant. You feel like Italian, I feellike Chinese, so let’s go to a cafeteria. Then it’styped into the computer. It may reflect on ournaiveté, but it was our belief that there would be anattempt to look at things scientifically.”

This doesn’t mean that people do not have problems. But as Dr. Hagen points out,“Unhappiness is a problem; it is not a disease. Lowself-esteem also is not a disease. Eating too much isnot a disease, and neither is eating too little ... thepsychological [and psychiatric] establishment hasdefined virtually all less-than-desirable behaviors,from hatred of first grade to serial rape, as psycho-logical diseases, and represents itself as uniquelyable to provide the necessary ‘therapies’ for them.”

DANGEROUS ‘THERAPIES’“Electroshock,” “shock treatment,” or “ECT”

is pain inflicted in the name of therapy. It is justas controversial and destructive today as it was in1975, when the film “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’sNest” was released. At the time, psychiatristsgave patients up to 20 shocks a day, arguing thatit could “wipe the mind clean and let it re-grow,”a phenomenon that is about as likely as growingback a leg after it has been amputated.

Proponents of ECT falsely claim that it is“safe and effective”—while having to admit thatthey have no idea how it works. This hasn’tstopped them from using it to make $5 billionper year in America alone, electroshocking morethan 110,000 citizens and hundreds of thousandsmore in other countries.

Psychosurgery, another unscientific, yet brutal “treatment,” destroys healthy parts of the

CCHHAAPPTTEERR TTWWOODESTROYING SANITY

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Tricked into a visit to the Mayo psychiatric clinic, Nobelprize winning author ErnestHemingway soon foundhimself subjected to a seriesof brutal shock treatmentsthat destroyed his writingcareer and his life.


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